Word: cropped
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...Army in Viet Nam long used a defoliant known as "Agent Orange" without qualms as a crop-killing spray. Purpose: to deny food to enemy forces. Last year a secret study sponsored by the National Cancer Institute raised grave doubts about a prime ingredient in Orange, the chemical compound 2,4,5-T. When the substance was fed in small doses to laboratory rats and mice, 80% of their offspring were stillborn, and 39% of the survivors were deformed...
...country's most bracing exports, at $500 million. This year, after a worrisomely chilly spring, the weather turned ideal, with just the right blend of sun and showers. As the grape harvest neared its end last week, prospects for the wine business glowed. The bumper crop is expected to yield 57 million barrels of wine, up better than 34% from last year...
...compound the problem, aerial spraying used to be so effective that mosquito-control agencies permitted farmers to forgo installing drainage facilities to reduce the insect's breeding grounds. As a result, the Central Valley's heavily irrigated crop lands have become huge hatcheries for Aëdes nigromaculus. Now that insecticides are useless, farmers are being ordered to drain their fields-a costly process that may force many small operators out of business...
Last week's full moon was the harvest moon, round and rich as the nation's produce has been this year. Across the plains, wheat farmers threshed bumper crops. Potato growers from Maine to Idaho were unearthing what should be a record yield-about 314 million hundredweight for the year. The hops of Oregon's Willamette Valley are in the sacks. The agribusiness entrepreneurs of California's San Joaquin Valley have had another good year in cotton. The peaches of Comus, Md., have rarely been juicier. Helminthosporium maydis-the wind-borne spore of Southern corn blight...
...Record Crop. A major reason for the change is the aging of the postwar baby boom. As the babies reached school age in the '50s and early '60s, they created the teacher shortage by their sheer numbers. Now they have moved through college and produced a record crop of teachers. This year the new academic job seekers are being joined by refugees from the tight private job market...